Today's service provider field ranges from start-ups to giants and from broadband to mobile. These operators have diverse requirements. One may be struggling with explosively rising volumes and needs automation, while another may face a saturated market where rapid service introduction is vital to survival.
The number and complexity of available telecom services are increasing every day. Transition towards open standards and all-IP networks allows easier development of new services. At the same time, services, such as VPN or broadband, have added more pressure for operational people because of their impact across different networks and organisational departments.
Service fulfillment is a process for providing customers with their requested services in a timely and correct manner. Due to its deep involvement with the customer, service fulfillment is in the focus of every company. Provisioning plays a key role in the service fulfillment process. Provisioning refers to the creation of subscribers and activation of services into the telecommunications network.
A product-based provisioning solution strengthens the service fulfillment by automating critical parts of it.
Automated provisioning translates into higher productivity, differentiation through perceived end-customer quality and improved competitiveness.
The basic capabilities of provisioning solutions include for instance mobile user provisioning and service activation. Examples of these are provisioning of user and basic and supplementary service information into HLR and authentication centre, and activation of Intelligence Network (IN) and messaging services.
Service provisioning has been described in EP-application 03727535 of the applicant of the present application. In this publication is described a general solution for a provisioning system with a layered software architecture with mountable and dismountable software modules.
The above document, however, is a single user solution for one entity, e.g., one telephone operator.